by Ailsa Wild
I understand why Dad said to ask Mum. Her work is all about countries working together to make everybody’s lives better. That’s what she’s trying to do at the UN.
‘And secondly, because when you bring diamonds into Australia, you have to pay tax. So some people smuggle them in, to hide from the tax office. Which means they make more money. It’s greedy.’
I nod. It makes me think of the shiny diamond catalogue in my pocket. The one I found on Mr Hinkenbushel’s doorstep. Why would Mr Hinkenbushel even have a diamond catalogue? Unless …
I hold the excitement in my chest while I say goodbye to Mum and while Jessie and Vee come to bed. Dad and Alice kiss us, and close our door. Then I make Jessie and Vee come sit on my bunk and whisper.
‘It’s Mr Hinkenbushel. He’s the diamond smuggler.’
They both laugh at me but I poke them. ‘No, listen,’ I say. ‘He had no luggage just now. Why would he have no luggage? Because he was already back!’
‘What?’ Jessie scoffs. ‘He was just hanging out with the burglars?’ Then she pauses thoughtfully.
I nod, even though they can’t see me in the dark. ‘He broke into his own apartment to make it look like he wasn’t there. That’s why nothing was stolen!’ I can feel my voice getting louder and I have to make myself calm down so Dad and Alice don’t hear us. ‘Plus, I found this.’ I hold up the diamond catalogue and shine the iPad light on it. ‘It was in his doorway. Why would he have this?’
Jessie takes the catalogue off me and turns it over. It sparkles under the light. She seems interested, but not convinced.
‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘do you know what his job is?’
Both of them shake their heads. I don’t know either. We stare at each other across the iPad light. Why would Mr Hinkenbushel keep his job a secret? That’s pretty suspicious.
Vee starts to get excited. ‘A real-life diamond smuggler!’ she says. ‘Cool.’
‘You’ll have to be able to prove it, though,’ Jessie says.
‘We have to tell the police,’ I say.
The next morning, I announce to Dad that we need to go to the police. Baby is screaming on the change table in the bathroom, and Vee and Alice are in the kitchen fighting about homework. Vee and Alice are the only ones who ever fight about homework. Jessie does hers because she likes it and Dad just forgets about mine. Alice says she’ll cook for me and wash my clothes, but she won’t make me do my homework. This is fine with me.
‘Mr Hinkenbushel is the diamond smuggler, Dad,’ I say, over the noise of Baby crying.
Dad wipes poo off Baby’s kicking legs. ‘What diamond smuggler?’ he asks.
‘The one on the news! Haven’t you been listening? There’s a Lord from England trying to find him and he’s in Melbourne and we know it’s Mr Hinkenbushel. We have to tell the police.’
Alice’s voice gets louder in the other room. ‘Just focus, Veronica. You could finish this in half an hour if you tried. You’re not trying.’
Dad smears some cream onto Baby’s bottom, which makes him scream even louder.
‘So, can we go to the police?’ I ask.
‘No,’ Dad says. Just like that. I don’t think he even heard me properly.
‘But Dad –’
‘No, Sita.’
‘But you didn’t even –’
In the other room, Vee yells, ‘MUM! I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU! SHE NEVER EXPLAINED IT TO ME.’
‘Do something useful and play with your brother,’ Dad says and puts Baby into my arms. Baby stops crying and reaches around my neck.
Dad takes my shoulders and turns me towards my bedroom. I hear him talking as he steps into the kitchen. ‘Cup of tea, Alice?’
Jessie is in our room on the bottom bunk. She’s lying on her tummy, looking at the iPad. I plop Baby on his back next to her and he starts pulling her hair and giggling.
‘No-one will believe you,’ she says. ‘You don’t have any evidence.’
She nudges her nose up to Baby’s and nuzzles it from side to side. He gurgles and his smile gets even bigger. He’s pretty cute.
‘But the police station’s only round the corner,’ Jessie says. ‘We could just go.’
She shows me the map. She’s already done a search and we don’t even need to cross a road to get there.
Alice says we can take Baby for his nap (he always goes walking for his nap) but she makes us tell her the three rules:
1. Be quiet in the corridor.
2. Don’t cross any roads.
3. Never let go of the pram.
We know them off by heart.
Vee glares at us and we grin back. She knows we’re up to something fun but she can’t come with us. She has to finish her project.
Baby is asleep before we get to the lift. The police station is four doors down from the ice-cream shop. I do One-Foot-Slide-Scoots with the pram down the hill and Jessie tries to stop me.
I figure it’s not dangerous, though, because I obey rule number three: I never let go of the pram.
As we get close to the police station door, I start to feel nervous.
Inside there’s a big glass window with a little hole in it. I almost wish we didn’t come. A policeman steps up behind the counter. He is younger than Constable Graham and has a big smile.
‘What’s going on, guys?’ he asks, grinning. ‘D’you find a baby?’
‘No, he’s ours,’ I say.
‘Let me guess … you’re the father?’ He points at me and we all laugh.
When we stop laughing, Jessie speaks. ‘We’re here about the diamond smuggler.’
‘Oh-kaaaay,’ the policeman says. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He types something into his computer.
‘So, talk to me,’ he says.
Jessie nudges me. So I tell him about Mr Hinkenbushel having no luggage and how he wasn’t away at all, so he must have faked the burglary himself. I show the policeman the diamond catalogue I found. His lips are pinched together, like he’s trying not to laugh, but he types it all down.
‘Is that everything?’ he asks.
I think about what the news said – the police are looking for forged documents that declare the diamonds to be legal.
‘Well, Mr Hinkenbushel probably has the forged documents. They’d be in his apartment. Or a secure bank safe,’ I say. ‘Or maybe buried somewhere.’
His face cracks into a huge smile, like I’m the funniest thing he’s ever seen, but he’s nice anyway. ‘OK. Well listen, thanks for coming in.’ His face goes serious. ‘It’s really important to report suspicious things. Even if they feel a bit … silly.’
He doesn’t believe us.
Out on the street, Jessie pushes Baby and I climb up and walk the fence rail by the church. I can usually take seven steps before I have to jump down, but this time I only get to three. I hate that the policeman doesn’t trust us.
After school on Monday, we all catch the tram home. Before I had a bonus family, Mum or Dad picked me up. Now that there’s three of us, we catch the tram. Alice says we can look after each other.
The tram is empty enough to do Upside-Down-Crazy-Legs from the handholds, but Vee won’t join me. She’s mad at us for going to the police station without her.
I do twenty-five scissor kicks and don’t even let go when the tram stops. ‘Bet you can’t do that,’ I say to Vee, stumbling down to my feet and nearly falling on her.
She does thirty-two and then sits with her back to me.
Jessie rolls her eyes at me and whispers, ‘She’s been like this all day.’
Jessie reminds us in the lift to be quiet going past Mr Hinkenbushel’s door. Not that we were making any noise anyway. I slow down as we pass, but Mr Hinkenbushel’s door is closed and I feel a bit disappointed. Maybe nothing has happened.
I’m ready for snacks and a massive glass of milk, so I open our door with my key and barge into the kitchen first.
Then: ‘Whoa there!’ says a familiar voice.
Constable Graham is sitting at the table wit
h Dad and Alice. None of them look very happy. They’ve got the iPad in front of them and when I see what they’re looking at, I feel sick.
It’s the HRC website with our old revenge video.
They’ve paused the video halfway through. My face is close to the camera. My nose is wrinkled and my eyes are squinty.
‘Sita,’ Dad says. ‘What were you thinking?’ He sounds angry and disappointed and I stare down at the iPad screen.
Constable Graham taps a stumpy finger on the iPad and the video starts playing again. It’s me, talking (but Jessie helped make up the words): ‘So, in conclusion, we swear dire vengeance on Mr Hinkenbushel. Anything we can do to make his life worse, we will. We will strike him down, mess him up and turn his world inside out.’
Then Vee and Jessie squash their faces next to mine.
‘We swear,’ they both say, pulling snake-eyes at the camera.
‘We’re gonna get you, Mr Hinkenbushel!’ I promise.
Then Jessie reaches forward to stop recording. As she does, you can hear us all start to laugh.
There is silence in the kitchen.
Constable Graham says, ‘It was you three who broke into Mr Hinkenbushel’s apartment the other night, wasn’t it?’
Jessie has gone white and is shaking her head.
‘No!’ I say. ‘We would never!’
‘Well, I didn’t,’ Vee says, and you can already tell she’s going to say something mean. ‘But I don’t know what Jessie and Squish have been doing …’
As if we could have broken into Mr Hinkenbushel’s without her knowing.
‘It really, really wasn’t us, Dad,’ I say.
Dad shakes his head and gestures towards the iPad. ‘This video is plenty to get you into trouble, Sita. It’s a question of trust. You went and put this online after you promised you’d give up that club.’
‘But we did give up the club. This is from before. We haven’t looked at it for months. We’d pretty much forgotten about it. Really, Dad.’
‘It’s true,’ Jessie chips in. ‘It says it on the YouTube page.’
Dad holds up his hand. ‘Enough, Jessie. Constable Graham wants to speak with each of you, one at a time. Jessie first. Vee, go sit in your room. Squishy, our room.’
They’re separating us because they don’t trust us. They think if we’re together, we’ll make up lies. For some reason that makes me feel worse than anything that’s happened so far. I feel the tears choking in the back of my throat and run before everyone sees.
I lie on Alice and Dad’s bed, crying into my hands. I wonder what the policeman is going to say to me. I hate that Dad thinks we’d lie to him about something this big. I wish Vee wasn’t so mad at us. I wish my mum was here. I look around for the iPad, thinking about skyping her, but it’s busy being evidence in the kitchen.
I roll over and look over Dad and Alice’s balcony to the building opposite.
Boring Lady is in her office. Typing as usual.
I get up and go out onto the balcony. I look along our outside wall. If I lean out far enough, I can almost see into our bedroom. I wish I could talk to Vee, make her understand that we didn’t want to leave her out when we went to the police. Make sure she doesn’t say some dumb lie and get us all in trouble. If I was really desperate, I think, I could swing myself across to our window. I measure the handholds with my eyes as if I was at the rock-climbing gym.
Then Dad calls from the kitchen and I realise I’ve accidentally locked the balcony door behind me. It doesn’t matter, because I can do the bobby-pin trick. The locks on these balcony doors are pretty simple because being eleven storeys up is its own security.
I pull a pin out of my hair and click it easily in the lock. But the bobby-pin trick isn’t as fun and satisfying as it usually is. My stomach has dropped down so far it’s pretty much on the floor. I don’t want to talk to the police.
By the time Constable Graham finally leaves, Dad believes that we didn’t break into Mr Hinkenbushel’s apartment. So does Alice. Vee obviously didn’t make up any lies about us, but she’s just as obviously still mad. And Dad and Alice are really mad about the website and the video. They talk seriously about online bullying and community spirit.
They should talk to Mr Hinkenbushel about community spirit. He’s the one who shouts and won’t let us play in the corridor. And probably smuggles illegal diamonds.
Dad skypes Mum and they talk for ages. Then Mum doesn’t have time to talk to me before she has to race off to her next meeting. That doesn’t feel fair. The one time I really need to talk to her, and Dad gets all the time she has.
I lie in bed in the dark, thinking about Mr Hinkenbushel. I wonder if the police are any closer to figuring out that he’s their man. Probably not. They’re too worried about me and my bonus sisters being criminals. Still.
‘How are we going to catch Mr Hinkenbushel?’ I whisper.
‘Go to sleep,’ says Jessie, in the bunk underneath me.
‘No-one’s going to believe us now,’ I whisper.
‘That’s because you don’t have any evidence,’ Jessie says.
‘Serves you right for not taking me to the police station,’ Vee says, rolling over sulkily, making the whole bunk shake.
‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ says Jessie.
There is a pause.
‘It was still mean, though.’
‘Well, if you’d done your homework when you were supposed to –’
‘Shut UP, Jessie. We can’t all be boring losers,’ Vee half-shouts. I can tell she’s sitting up.
Dad’s voice growls warningly from outside, ‘I can hear you, kids.’
The room echoes with offended silence.
‘We just have to find the evidence,’ I say.
But no-one answers.
In the morning, Vee isn’t talking to any of us. Jessie turns on the radio news while we all eat cereal. It’s boring. I try to hold Baby on my lap and eat at the same time, but I drop yoghurt on his head and Alice takes him off me.
Then it’s the story we’ve been waiting for.
‘Sources say police are still seeking forged documents that they hope will lead them to the diamond smugglers. Lord Smiggenbotham-Chancery suggests Melbourne Police might not be up to scratch.’
The familiar, lazy voice comes on. He sounds half-amused. ‘The police department is the most bumbling, absurd, inefficient force I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with.’
Then the reporter comes back on. ‘The government says it is not considering an inquiry into police productivity at this stage.’
Jessie meets my eye over her breakfast spoon. She’s thinking what I’m thinking. Those forged documents might be just the evidence we need against Mr Hinkenbushel. She’s smart enough not to say anything in front of Dad and Alice. Also, there’s the problem of Vee.
Vee gets on the tram at the opposite end to us. She sits there with her earphones in and her ponytail swinging. Jessie rolls her eyes.
I lean in to Jessie and whisper, ‘If Mr Hinkenbushel has the forged documents, where do you think he’s keeping them?’
Jessie shrugs, her eyes on Vee’s ponytail. Finally she says, ‘We need to know what he does, where he goes, understand his movements. But …’
I know what she’s thinking. If we get any further into this adventure without Vee, she’s going to be so mad she might blow up our apartment – or the whole of Melbourne.
‘There’s only one thing for it,’ I say finally. ‘A crazy bonus-sister apology.’
I stand up on the crowded tram and shout out, ‘I’m SOOO sorry, Vee!’
She looks around. First success. I was louder than the music in her earphones. She scowls and shrinks down in her seat. I push down the aisle towards her, donking people with my schoolbag on the way through. Jessie follows, giggling and trying to hush me.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I miss you!’ I sing, until I’m standing in front of her, doing prayer hands. The tram stops and I nearly fall over backwards
. Vee has curled down into her seat and her ears are red.
‘We’re sorry. Please, we need your help. And … STACKS ON!’ I jump so I’m half-sitting, half-lying on her lap. Jessie jumps on top of me. We’re a heavy tangle of arms and schoolbags and laughter.
‘Please, please forgive us? And help us,’ I beg, into her armpit.
‘Fine. Fine. But get OFF me,’ Vee says and we scramble to our feet.
Luckily, the person who was sitting next to Vee decides to stand up, so we all squeeze together on the one seat.
‘OK,’ I whisper. I realise it’s going to be very difficult to have a secret meeting now the whole tram is watching us. I huddle in close to my bonus sisters. ‘How do we get evidence against Mr Hinkenbushel?’
‘We need to watch his door, and then follow him wherever he goes,’ Vee says.
I feel my heart relax because she’s on our team again.
Jessie nods. ‘A stake-out!’
‘But we can’t watch his apartment door,’ I object. The others agree. That would last about three minutes before Alice put a stop to it.
‘The street door then,’ Jessie says. ‘Let’s make a list of all the reasons to hang around out the front.’
This is a really good plan, because Jessie likes lists and Vee likes thinking of ways to be sneaky.
Jessie gets out her notebook and writes:
Take Baby out for his nap.
We stare at it. Good. But it only lasts for as long as Baby’s asleep.
Vee says, ‘We offer to run all the shopping errands and then one of us stays behind at the front door.’
Jessie writes it down, but it’s the same problem. There’s a time limit.
‘Pretend we want to play on the footpath because we’re not allowed to play in the corridor,’ Jessie says.
Straight away, I know it’s genius. We could do that for hours.
Vee ‘borrows’ footpath chalk from the gym at school and Jessie googles hopscotch, so by the time we get home we’re ready to start the stake-out.
I leave Jessie and Vee on the footpath and take the lift up with all our bags. I tell Alice what we’re doing and she says, ‘Hopscotch! That was retro when I was in primary school. Well, don’t annoy anyone, and stay away from the road.’
